Roy Jenkins

Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British Labour Party, SDP and Liberal Democrat politician, and biographer of British political leaders. The son of a Welsh trade unionist (later a Labour MP and government minister), Roy Jenkins was educated at Oxford University and served as an intelligence officer in the Second World War. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in Harold Wilson's First Government. As Home Secretary in 1965–1967, he sought to build what he described as "a civilised society", with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of both capital punishment and theatre censorship, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the liberalisation of abortion law. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1967–1970, he pursued a tight fiscal policy. On 8 July 1970, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, but resigned in 1972 because he supported entry to the Common Market, while the party opposed it. When Wilson re-entered government in 1974 Jenkins returned to the Home Office, but increasingly disenchanted by the leftward swing of the Labour Party, he chose to leave British politics in 1976 and was appointed President of the European Commission in 1977, serving until 1981: he was the first and likely only British holder of this office considering the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union in June 2016. In 1981, dismayed with the Labour Party's leftward swing under Michael Foot, he was one of the "Gang of Four" – more centrist Labour MPs who formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In 1982 he won a famous by-election in a Conservative seat and returned to parliament; he was "Prime Minister Designate" of the SDP-Liberal Alliance in the 1983 election but after disappointment with the performance of the SDP he resigned as SDP leader. In 1987, Jenkins was elected to succeed Harold Macmillan as Chancellor of the University of Oxford following the latter's death; he held this position until his death. A few months after becoming Chancellor, Jenkins was defeated in his Hillhead constituency by the Labour candidate. Jenkins accepted a life peerage and sat as a Liberal Democrat. In the late 1990s, he was an adviser to Tony Blair and chaired the Jenkins Commission on electoral reform. Roy Jenkins died in 2003, aged 82. In addition to his political career, he was also a noted historian, biographer and writer. His A Life at the Centre (1991) is regarded as one of the best autobiographies of the later 20th century, which 'will be read with pleasure long after most examples of the genre have been forgotten'.